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In the email today:
⚾️ Updates On Unrivaled Sports’ Ripken Stadium Plans
We have more details on how the platform will move into one of the corners of the Ripken empire not currently under its banner.
ICYMI last fall: The Baltimore Sun reported Unrivaled wanted to take control of the minor league ballpark next to the Ripken Experience complex in Aberdeen, Maryland, via a long-term lease on the city-owned venue.
We now have more details:
Aberdeen plans to ask for $50M in state funding
That will be on top of $5M already awarded in FY2027 state budget
Unrivaled will commit around $20M to the project
Maryland Stadium Authority will use bonds to cover new parking garage
Plans call to turn the parking lots around the stadium into four multi-purpose rectangular turf fields for flag football, lacrosse, soccer, etc.
The fields would be open to the public at all times, according to the report— they would also provide extra baseball diamond space.
Renovations to the stadium are also expected. The Aberdeen IronBirds, now an MLB Draft League team, would likely remain as a tenant and the stadium would continue to host other events like festivals.
The possibility of building a hotel, a restaurant and retail space has also been floated.
Unrivaled told The Sun the projected would bring in an additional 74K visitors and 38K participants each year.
⛑️ How Data Is Becoming Youth Sports' Best Negotiating and Decision Making Tool*
Every injury that happens at your event, program, or facility creates a paper trail, whether you're tracking it or not. The question is whether that trail works for you.
Go4's certified athletic trainers document every injury through a HIPAA-compliant electronic medical record (EMR) system built specifically for sports settings. Whether you're running a single facility, a multi-site program, a league, a tournament series or an entire national governing body, each entry becomes a digital report parents and athletes can access, a permanent record stored for seven years, and a source of de-identified data that shows the real safety picture across your organization.
That data has two uses most operators haven't fully tapped yet.
The first is leverage. Organizations that can document consistent athletic trainer coverage, standardized injury response, and a clean historical record of how incidents were handled and resolved are in a stronger position when it's time to negotiate premiums or coverage terms with insurance brokers and carriers. Instead of walking into a renewal conversation with anecdotes, you walk in with records.
The second is direction. Rule changes, equipment requirements, and safety standards in youth sports are often built on assumption or gut feel about what's causing injuries. An EMR that captures data over multiple seasons gives operators and NGBs something more reliable to work from. Real patterns in when, where, and how injuries happen can inform smarter rule changes and safety policy instead of reactive ones.
For anyone responsible for athlete safety, whether at the facility level or the national governing body level, this is where it starts. Reach out to learn how Go4's EMR and injury documentation can strengthen your safety program, your data, and your position at the table.
*Sponsor
🗣️ Q+A With Youth Enrichment Brands CEO Rob Price
I (James) recently spoke with Price about several topics. The full Q+A can be found here.
Three highlights:
1) We discussed Generation Real, the new initiative launched by YEB that is “dedicated to combating the current youth mental health crisis by rebuilding the real-world experiences, environments, and communities that build the essential infrastructure of a healthy childhood full of confidence, resilience, and joy.”
Price said he sees it as a bit of a “liberation movement” for families.
“Kids have been captive by two trends that are really unconstructive. One is this whole digital displacement — displacing real activity with simulated stimuli. The second is toxic achievement syndrome, where kids’ motivation has been rewired about activity for the sake of achievement and acknowledgement as opposed to for the sake of fundamental human development. We talk about confidence, resilience, joy, which we think is the X-factor for a formative childhood that turns into an exceptional adulthood.”
2) YEB’s youth sports brands — i9 Sports and US Sports Camps — have sterling reputations as accessible and affordable platforms with high participation. But the company is backed by Roark Capital, which means it is in the Let Kids Play Act’s crosshairs.
Price said “the conversation should be about what people who are organizers, conveners, stakeholders are designing. Not how it's being funded.”
“I’ve worked for public companies. I've worked for family-owned companies. I've worked for employee-owned companies. I've worked for private equity-owned companies. … The ownership structures that I've been exposed to that had the biggest scaling effect on driving access and driving participation, giving back, often are within the private equity environment.
“We're a passion-based business. We curate people in our franchisees, our camp directors, our team members who want to change lives. They don't sit there and agonize over what kind of EBIDTA margin are we going to generate? The KPIs we're talking about — are we saving lives? Are we changing lives? Are we getting more enrollment?”
3) Price spent several years as School of Rock’s president and CEO before the music franchise became part of YEB. We talked about the differences and similarities between the youth sports and youth music industries, and he had an interesting take about specialization and how time and money — both scarce resources — often dictate decisions.
"The cost in terms of time and money is so enormous if you really want to explore multiples," he said. "These things happen the same times of day. There are seasonal differences, but it’s hard to play two winter sports. I think the industry has to figure out a way to create more of a salad bar approach."
🎥 The Ethics Of Streaming
We highlighted the recent youth sports streaming and tech study published by Native Frame and Reeplayer last week.
The report closed with an impassioned case for why the industry should move away from Facebook and YouTube as the most prevalent streaming platforms:
Today, most of youth sports still livestream on social media. YouTube and Facebook are ubiquitous for the simple reasons that they are free, familiar, and unavoidable with their aggregated audience. However, these attention economies are neither a safe or lasting home for youth sports. Algorithms change, feeds are addictive, and broadcasting minors to the open internet is a risk parents increasingly question. Youth sports streaming that wins the next phase will offer what social media cannot — a controlled environment limited to an approved community around a team — built natively into the tools they already use.
It’s worth noting, however, that both Native Frame and Reeplayer, like many other youth-first streamers and platforms, have terms of service policies that put the responsibility on customers or camera operators to ensure the necessary consent has been obtained for children appearing in videos. Obviously that doesn’t happen in all cases. So moving youth sports off YouTube or Facebook may improve distribution controls, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the underlying consent problem.
ICYMI: 86% of youth sports organizations that stream events use either Facebook or YouTube, according to the study.
I get why Native Frame (streaming infrastructure firm) and Reeplayer (AI soccer camera maker) are making this argument — it aligns with their business interests while also having real merits.
But at the same time: We’ve seen that even closed streaming platforms can have security issues (see, the LiveBarn kerfuffle with the Canadian summer camp). These platforms are where kids are — at least YouTube is. And I think it’s a bit of a stretch to argue streaming on Facebook and YouTube is as much of a Wild West as this stance makes it out to be.
The study found only about 20% of non-streamers are being held back by safety concerns. It also found both streamers and non-streamers are thinking about accessible technology and ease of operation.
My gut tells me platforms like GameChanger and Hudl will continue to eat into the Facebook/YouTube market share, but those platforms are not going anywhere.
🧱 Facilities Arms Race: Virginia Is For Tournaments
A hotelier plans to go all-in on youth sports.
Sina Hospitality — which is based in the Richmond area and launched a youth sports-focused travel agency last year — now plans to build a $180M complex in Colonial Heights, according to Richmond BizSense.
The firm will buy a 38-acre lot from the city for $1 after agreeing to cover remediation at the site, which is a former landfill. City Council is expected to sign off later this month.
At least 6 fields
Multiple hotels (390 total rooms)
300 apartment units
At least one restaurant, maybe two
Concessions, parking
Sina Sports Travel will operate the fields; some construction is expected to begin next year with the entire project expected to be done within four years.
Sina CEO Ravi Patel told Richmond BizSense there have been talks about the city and his firm splitting revenues, but nothing is finalized.
🏛️ A Quick LKPA Note
Bill co-sponsor Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told USA Today he believes the LKPA will eventually pass, even if it takes several years.
"I've seen movement and momentum growing and I've been around the Senate long enough to know how this goes: The more awareness is raised and the more you're hitting that pain point, the more momentum a bill will have.
"And I think this is a bill that will get passed. It may take until January of 2029. If Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the White House, I think bills like this become a lot more possible, but right now you need that bipartisan support to get it through the Senate and I think this is something that can gain that kind of support as well."
Also interesting: Booker and LKPA co-sponsor Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) have reportedly teamed up to vigorously oppose the Protect College Sports Act.
Quick Take: We requested to have Cory Booker join us on our interview with the bill’s Congressional sponsor Chris Deluzio. That invite still stands.
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